Publications

In 2007, WWF concluded a review of its policies and programs as they relate to indigenous peoples and local communities. The review resulted in five main recommendations, explained in this report, on ways to strengthen partnerships with indigenous peoples and local communities and ensure high standards for that work throughout WWF.

The market for carbon credits and other environmental benefits from forests (often characterized under the acronym REDD+, reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation), received a major boost at the Cancun climate meeting last December. In this issue, Iain Henderson and Steve Ruddell, two of WWF’s forest carbon advisors, explore REDD+ and emerging opportunities in carbon markets.

This report identifies a set of principles for climate-adaptive institutions and includes five case studies from around the world that highlight different institutional responses to climate change and related challenges.

Good governance in conservation involves a policy environment and empowered civil society organizations that support democratic participation in decision-making about environmental matters and equitable access to the benefits of conservation. WWF’s conservation work includes efforts to promote governance using multiple approaches ranging from the local to global scale.

In The Energy Report, WWF indicates how its vision of a 100 percent renewable and sustainable energy supply could be realized. The Energy Report is the most ambitious, science-based examination yet of a renewable and clean energy future on a global scale. It covers all energy needs and the challenge of providing reliable and safe energy to all.

Through the Shrimp Aquaculture Dialogue (ShAD), performance-based standards for shrimp farming are being developed. This document provides the second draft of the principles and criteria that will form the final standards. When completed, the final standards will help minimize the key environmental and social impacts related to shrimp farming.

Over the past four years the Florida Ranchlands Environmental Services Project (FRESP) has been field testing elements of a Payment for Environmental Services (PES) program where cattle ranchers can use working agricultural land to provide valuable water-related environmental services, using market-like concepts to increase the provision of environmental services. This edition profiles opportunities for valuing natural capital.

This project aims to research natural human population growth (excluding migration) in some of WWF’s priority places, by identifying the current stage of demographic transition in each and key factors affecting prevailing fertility and mortality rates.

In 2007, a group of 81 people met in Vietnam to begin to develop global standards for the pangasius aquaculture industry. Over a three-year period, 550 more people joined the discussion. Their work ended in August 2010, when the first set of credible global standards for the pangasius aquaculture industry was published. WWF led this initiative.

The group – called the Pangasius Aquaculture Dialogue – was motivated by the need to minimize the potential negative impacts pangasius farming can have on the environment and society. The impacts associated with this type of farming, which usually is done in a man-made pond, include water pollution, the destruction of natural habitat and unfair wages for farm workers.

The final standards will help transform one of the fastest growing aquaculture industries in the world. In Vietnam, where most farmed pangasius comes from, more than 1 million tons of farmed pangasius is produced annually, up from 110,000 tons in 2000. Most of the fish is exported to the European Union, United States and Russia.

Pangasius farmers who adopt the standards will earn a label from a new entity, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, certifying that their seafood was raised in an environmentally-friendly and socially-responsible way.

Through the Freshwater Trout Aquaculture Dialogue (SAD), performance-based standards for freshwater trout farming are being developed. This document provides the first draft of the principles and criteria that will form the final standards. When completed, the final standards will help minimize the key environmental and social impacts related to freshwater trout farming.

Through the Salmon Aquaculture Dialogue (SAD), performance-based standards for salmon farming are being developed. This document provides the first draft of the principles and criteria that will form the final standards. When completed, the final standards will help minimize the key environmental and social impacts related to salmon farming.

Coral reefs are being lost to the world at a rate five times faster than rainforests, often as a result of polluted farm run-off. The good news is that solutions are being pioneered in Australia as a result of innovative lending, demonstrating that modern technology can significantly improve farm profitability and reduce pollution at the same time.

Putting a price on carbon pollution and investing in clean technology projects in developing countries could create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the U.S. and help America catch up to China and Europe in the clean energy race.

This case study, by consultant Nancy Diamond, demonstrates the application of a gender-integration tool that can be used by the conservation sector (called WWF Women’s Economic, Social, and Political Empowerment Tool or “WWESPE”), to the context of integrated population, health, environment (PHE) projects implemented by WWF-Nepal. The study focuses on the extent to which these WWF PHE projects contributed to women’s empowerment and/or conservation outcomes.